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The FM24 Youth Academy Challenge


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I am struggling to get past the second season after having a good first season, keep running out of players and having to use greyed out ones. ;(

Going to try Portugal as a starting berth.

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NK Roltek Dob 2025/26

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We managed to keep all the players and slowly started to incorporate 1 or 2 youngsters to the A team. Our start was not that good and we were sitting aorund the 7th place but suddenly we started picking up win after win and eventually even surpassed Triglav for 1st place. In the end we did not manage to hold on to the 1st place and had to play in play-offs. I was hopeful because in both seasons we played very well vs. First Division teams and we managed to beat Beltinci to book ourselves a spot in the First Division! Honestly I am not even that worried for the next season, I think we should manage to stay up. But our depth is really lacking, if we get an injury crisis that would be really bad for us.

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Key players: Jaka KasnikTian Pantelic & Davorin Gosak

Transfers

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5 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

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AMIDST TRANSFER CHAOS THE GREENS WIN THE TITLE

I am going to trim down my yearly updates because one of the reasons for doing Malta is a smaller league and get through the seasons quicker. I was going to do 2 years per update but given what went on in the first season I thought it would be best to have the first one now.

I mentioned in earlier posts that as soon as the first transfer window opened I was being bombarded with news items of approaches to sign nearly every player in my squad (the best ones at least) and little did I know until a little @WhiteCat33 told me, that if you set the contract start date to be the end of the season it will at least buy you that much time without any further offers as they have already accepted a contract. Without knowing this I lost 6 of my key players (2 out of the 3 strikers 2 out of my 3 central midielders a highly promising left winger and a defensive utility man that could pretty much play anywhere).

Up until the first window closing we were actually doing really well and even after losing these players and playing a right winger in DMC position we were still getting results (guess this shows the awful level of Tier 3 football in Malta).

I had opted for my trusty 4-2-4 wide formation but I moved the central midfielders to be DMs to suit my 1 remaining midfielder and also to provide a little more cover at the back.

Things were going well and the second transfer window opened and now with the knowledge provided to me I was able to avoid losing a single player in that window.

We continued our good form and with about 5 games to go we were 12 points clear with a game in hand and it was looking comfortable. Then we lost to Rabat Ajax, no big deal right with a gap like that? Well it turns out the scheduling in Malta is a bit imbalanced (possibly due to stadium sharing) which meant that the spread of games played often wasn't symmetrical. Rabat Ajax were one of those teams who had played about 4 games less than everyone else (including myself) and were now 10 points behind and in fine form.

It produced a very nervy end to the season especially when my game in hand with 2 games to go saw me travel to 3rd placed team Marsaskala with Rabat level on points but behind on goal difference and I came away with a 1 nil win to restore the 3 point gap and at this point avoiding a complete disaster in the last game would see us crowned as champions. In another away match to 8th placed Xgħajra Tornadoes it was another nervy 1-0 win that clinched to title.
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Our defence was the one area not really impacted by the sales and it shows as we only conceded 12 goals in 22 games but scoring goals was a bit more tricky playing with the one grey striker. I can only wonder what might have happened if I had held onto those 6 players however financially it would have left us in an even worse position as we are currently £27k in the red and that was despite making a few rounds of the Maltese Trophy which provided £10k prize money for winning in the third round and would have given £20k if we had won in the 4th round away to Premier League side Gzira United (3-2 loss) but we still got £10k for losing there as well.

Financially we need to look to progress in the cup as much as possible to balance the books as the shirt sponsor deal is only worth around £6k at the moment and there will be no money coming in from anywhere else unless the board provide funds to keep us in the black.

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There were no coaching courses approved due to the finances nor any improvements and this may remain the same for some time.

Youth Intake

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The intake was all about numbers and replenishing a depleted first team squad following that first transfer window however Michael Attard Y1-A looks like he will make a big difference right away. In addition to him there is a left winger where I was lacking depth and quality and two central midfielders albeit more attacking minded so I might have to retrain or tweak the formation into something less symmetrical.

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I'm looking into my own ratings approach for the youth players but I'm nowhere near ready to use it and I just want to get the save moving so for now its just a case of looking at the intake at face value and according to my backroom staffs view of their abilities.

Squad News

I want to spend more time looking at the squad during this save so I will be tracking the squad planner for the coming season, squad depth, experience matrix and an overview of the squad each update:

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The average ability looks a little better than it did before the intake but you can clearly see DMC is a problem area.

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This is again backed up in the squad depth view showing that I have 1 player recognised as a DM, but he is a pretty decent one at that. You can also see the strength of the defence but its only 1 layer deep.

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Experience matrix shows only the 1 experienced player in Lee Galea who has now retired.

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I'd say overall the squad is looking ok as far as potential is concerned (at least according to the coaches) but as always you have to temper these expectations until the players start playing and age by a couple of years.

Bingo Card

A reasonable first year for the Bingo Card but I've seen that there are no awards given in this league (must have been something Timo didn't want to do) so at least 4 of these will never be achievable (A3 through B4) so I will most likely change these to something I can actually achieve.

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Admin

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Glad the trick paid off for you before it was too late! It makes the promotion that more sweet right? 

I had a fun YAC save in Malta back in fm22 so remember Gzira, very close tie there even with a depleted squad. They start professional irc.

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18 hours ago, djsterry said:

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Villa Dalmine 4th season Update 

As predicted Giglio left the club, it was even quicker than expected he was gone before the season started

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Once again the club let me make improvements with the cash

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I didn't have high expectations for the season and I ended up with another 8th place finish.

Shockingly I ended up getting promoted via the play offs:hammer:

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I love a 3-1 result 

I'm fully expecting to be relegated, I'm not even a good 2nd division team.

It was a fairly poor intake again but I have a full bench now and can bring on subs for most positions at least 

Wish me luck next year I'm going to need it:lol:

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Quick 5th Season Update 

I didn't get relegated which I was very happy with but this is a poor side, need a good few youth players to come through.

no sales of note just a couple of bench players 

Finances are quite poor I'm losing money due to the youth costs, wage bill is only 9k a week 

New stadium that was built has a max capacity of just under 15k (currently 7.5k) so not much room for improvement there. I'm guessing I will need the odd player sale to keep in the black.

 

 

Fc United finally made the top ten, Obviously a few years since I left them but my players that were the star graduates so I'm taking some credit :lol:

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Not looking for downloads!....But, any tactical trips for Vanarama National? The gulf in quality from the Vanarama South to the National is just killing my Dulwich team. Granted, my defenders are all 18 and 19 years old, but we're letting in insane amounts of goals. I've tried 4 at back, 5 at back, 3 at back, just struggling with everything. It's 2041 and I finally made it to the National league, really don't want to get relegated back aright away :lol:

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3 hours ago, WhiteCat33 said:

Glad the trick paid off for you before it was too late! It makes the promotion that more sweet right? 

I had a fun YAC save in Malta back in fm22 so remember Gzira, very close tie there even with a depleted squad. They start professional irc.

Honestly thought after spending a while pulling together the club logos and competition logos that it would all be for nothing as I’d have lost too many players to be competitive and with both the board and fans expecting we’d win the league that I’d be a goner. I also saw in the end of season review there were another 4 players that left, 2 Brazilians with one going to Hibernians in the premier and being really successful this season.

I had a look out of curiosity for the status of clubs and it’s just Hamrun Spartans in this pack that are professional. It really excites me at the prospect of building the nation up I just have to see past the 100s of Attards, Borgs, Cauchis and Scerris as the names tend to repeat through the regents :lol:

Though thank you once more, I feel like that little tip will make this save possible and even if it fails the semi-pro route in small countries where your entire squad is targeted for transfer will not seem that daunting.

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20 minutes ago, WhiteCat33 said:

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Etincelle Macouba – Martinique Youth Academy Challenge

2027 Season 3 – Martinique Trophee Claude Chade R3

 

Past Updates:

  Reveal hidden contents

FM24 YAC Thread:

Intro Post | Season 1 |Season 2|

 

League Performance: 3rd Place Finish

 Similar situation to last year where the final day of the season there was an outside chance that we could catch CO Trenelle. However, they smoked their opposition while we suffered a late equalizer to go out 3rd with the highest goal difference. Lots of dropped points due to our inability to cope with the late game 'send it' by teams.

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Domestic Cup Performance: 3rd Round Exit

I'm happy with the cup performance as we were knocked out by a top 3 club in Martinique in a thrilling 4-3 match.

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  Reveal hidden contents

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Squad:

CA & RA Excel Player List:

Team is still very poor, and you can see I have some issues with the H.A. calculations. I've been more of a play-fm mood so the spreadsheet is on the backburner.

  Reveal hidden contents

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CA & RA Team Tables:

Unsurprising from them being top 3 players in the league, my strength right now is CM. Worth noting we also have developed 3 decent CBs and our VC LB is doing perfectly fine as well, and will be a long term mentor for the defensive side of the team. GK was a notable weakness this year...

  Reveal hidden contents

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Player Highlights:

Luciani had a fantastic season as our playmaker, showing dropping him back was the right call. 8 goals, 6 assists and 7.56 AR saw him named as the R2 Player of the Year (and young player). Shame he tore his hamstring in the final month of the season as he was sorely missed in the last 3 games.

Bilal Catteau was his partner in CM and our dead-ball specialist who was lethal with 11 goals and 4 assists with a 7.49 AR. Shows how strong just 12 FK taking is at this low of a level. Obviously, we have a winning midfield partnership that I don't want to mess with. You'll see he got 3rd and 2nd for PoY & YPoY above.

Transfer Activity:

None

Best XI:

Michael Pages makes it our first Youth Academy player to break 50 Appearances if we count Y0 players. The 5 players above him are older players who made transfers in. For players from my time at the club Sacha Bousquet will be the first to break 50.

  Reveal hidden contents

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Head Coach:

No badges, I'm at the 'we're afraid you'll leave us' stage.

Club Improvements:

Purposefully ahven't upgraded the recruitment or coaching as financially the club is break-even right now and I don't want a negative balance situation. No teams in Martinique are Professional, so finances will be a real struggle for us until we can gain some money from Caribbean competitions.

Youth Academy:

Head of Youth Development:

Same

Youth Intake Preview:

  Reveal hidden contents

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Youth Intake:

  Reveal hidden contents

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YI Best Candidates:

One Star GK and two uninspiring depth players

Excel

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Slowly building up the data to see what we are trending. I'd say 3 more years till I can say anything meaningful here.

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Personalities were a lot better this year and are slowly bringing what we want to the more common positions. This Intake was a shallow intake with a standout star, which is perfect for us right now.

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Still to early to tell, but love the standout quality of the GK combined with some improving personalities. 

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Academy Tables:

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Spreadsheet Manager:

Still a lot to do to make this ready to share. 

EDIT: Bingo! 

With the inability to get back-to-back promotions in a 3-tier league I added in the Antiles cup between Martinique, Guadeloupe & 2 small island nations. A draw for Martinique is the sheer number of cups you can win in a season, which hopefully will boost reputation

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Summary:

I put a lot of our struggles to finish off games on my poor GK, so this intake was unbelievable for the club. Thankfully the GK came in at only 15 as I have little to no hope of retaining him once he goes onto a non-contract. But for one year, let's see if this is the final piece we need to bump up to the topflight! In a way I'm happy with how it isn't a breaze to cruise up to the top of the pyramid here. On the wishlist now is a better striker as my legacy guy lost all his speed, and no one else really inspires confidence. It's telling that our two top goal scorers are our center midfielders.

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Awesome update as usual, you were really unlucky in the cup as I’ve seen those kind of match stats result in a win for “your side” many times but it’s reassuring to know you can hold your own at this stage.

Your charts are also an inspiration, I’m wanting to delve more into this space but I feel like such a novice. Guess it’s a case of starting small and working up from there.

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3 minutes ago, Neo_Geo said:

just have to see past the 100s of Attards, Borgs, Cauchis and Scerris as the names tend to repeat through the regents 

I feel you, had that problem in Barbados. Too late for this build a nation but if you have the pregame editor for future saves: 

IIUC this allows you to increase the names available of whatever nation you set the placeholder players to. Haven't tried it myself.

 

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13 minutes ago, WhiteCat33 said:

I feel you, had that problem in Barbados. Too late for this build a nation but if you have the pregame editor for future saves: 

IIUC this allows you to increase the names available of whatever nation you set the placeholder players to. Haven't tried it myself.

 

Good to know there are tools out there for this “issue”

I can always change the surname when I update the name with the intake identifier but I’m not exactly clued up on Maltese surnames.

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42 minutes ago, Neo_Geo said:

Awesome update as usual, you were really unlucky in the cup as I’ve seen those kind of match stats result in a win for “your side” many times but it’s reassuring to know you can hold your own at this stage.

Your charts are also an inspiration, I’m wanting to delve more into this space but I feel like such a novice. Guess it’s a case of starting small and working up from there.

Goalkeeper got a 5.8 rating in that match, so you can see why im ecstatic with this year's intake. Excited to see what shannanigans my new GK gets up to with 15 eccentricity. Tempted to switch him to SK-A for some nonsense!

Thanks on the spreadhsheets, I've been building my two spreadsheets since FM22. It has always been a case of adding one feature at a time to answer the question I have about my current team.

Last question was Current ability and Role ability and now I'm onto hidden ability as I really want to end up with a better ratio of consistent + big match players compared to my last save.

Thankfully the game actually is pretty decent about exporting clean data to work with just the one issue of parsing out positions. I was lazy and have over 300 hardcodes to create 7 position variables. I'll add those in an edit, which should Jumpstart anyone's excel analysis.

If you have access to excel365 the unique() fn should be your friend to create conditional lists. I have to use legacy array functions in my sheets cause I'm cheap and they can be finicky especially when you need 3 conditions. (Leauge, position game time)

PlayerPosition.xlsx

Edited by WhiteCat33
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LEÇA FUTEBOL CLUBE (PORTUGAL)

SEASON 2 - 2025/26

Finances | League Results | League Table | Playoff Results | Playoff Table | Portuguese Cup Results | Squad U19 Squad 1 | U19 Squad 2 | Youth Preview 1 | Youth Preview 2 |Youth Intake I | Youth Intake II | Transfers |

YOUTH CANDIDATES

ELITE | Tomás Vareira | Doro Portal | Emanuel | Rémulo Júnior | David Ritter |

TOP | Stéphane Rola | Amado Gomes da Silva |Rafael Silva | Bruno Vieirinha |

GOOD | Jean-Pat Gisi | Abubacar Dju | Pedrinho | Edi Correia | Sérgio Silva |

DECENT | Flávio Lima | Bruno Gonçalves |

 

 

 

Personal Contract

Season        Contract Start Date       Contract Expiry Date    Pre Tax Wage     Post Tax Wage
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At start          29 June 2024             30 June 2025          €43k p/y           29k p/y
2024/25           26 December 2024         30 June 2026          €43k p/y           29k p/y
2025/26           25 November 2025         30 June 2027          €16,75k p/y        12,75k p/y

Personal Coaching Data

Season     Reputation            Qualifications     Att  Def  Fit  GkD  GkH  GkS  Tac  Tec  Men  SeP  WWY  Ada  Det  PlK  YoK  LoD  PeM  Mot
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At start   Minimal   (0.50*)     None                 1    1    1    1    1    1    1    1    1    1    5    1    1    1    1    1    3    3
2024/25    Minimal   (0.50*)     None                 3↑   3↑   2↑   1=   1=   1=   4↑   3↑   3↑   1=   7↑   1=   3↑   3↑   3↑   2↑   5↑   5↑
2025/26    Minimal   (1*)        None                 4↑   4↑   2=   1=   1=   1=   5↑   4↑   4↑   1=   7=   1=   4↑   4↑   4↑   2=   7↑   6↑

Club Facilities

Season     Training Facilities  Youth Facilities  Corporate Facilities  Junior Coaching  Youth Recruitment  Club Reputation
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At Start        Good (12)          Average (10)       Fairly Basic        Adequate (10)     Average (10)       Decent (2*)
2024/25         Good (12)=         Average (10)=      Fairly Basic        Adequate (11)↑    Average (10)=      Decent (2*)=
2025/26         Average (11)      Average (10)=      Fairly Basic        Good (14)↑        Average (10)=      Decent (2*)=

Season Record

Season     Played     Won     Drawn     Lost     Goals For     Goals Against     Goal Difference     Win Percentage
2024/25     39        26        6         7         96               51                +45               66,67%
2025/26     33        13        9         11        55               50                +5                39,39%

Overall Career Record

After Season   Played     Won     Drawn     Lost     Goals For     Goals Against     Goal Difference     Win Percentage     Time At Club
2025/26          72        39       15       18          151            101                +50                54,16%              707

Transfer Sale Record

Date               Player                    Position               Club Sold To                 Country                   Transfer Fee
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trophy Haul

Season     Competition Won
--------------------------

Trophy Cabinet

League Titles
-------------

Cup Competition Victories
-------------------------

Career Overview

Season     Champions League    Europa League    Europa Conference League       League               Position   Playoff      Portoguese Cup
2024/25           -                  -                      -             Campeonato de Portugal      3        2              Semi Final
2025/26           -                  -                      -                 Liga 3                  3        6              2nd stage

Record Number of Appearances (Players From The Academy Only)

Season     Player                          Cumulative Number of Appearances
2025/26    Huber Bats                                     55

Record Goal Scorer (Players From The Academy Only)

Season     Player                          Cumulative Number of Goals
2025/26  Huber Bats                                   5

Record Number of Assists (Players From The Academy Only)

Season     Player                          Cumulative Number of Assists
2025/26   Huber Bats                                  5

Record Number of Clean Sheets (Players From The Academy Only)

Season     Player                          Cumulative Number of Clean Sheets
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

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This is the most infuriating Excel Error I have ever seen. Somewhere in my Calculator something is corrupted or missing a reference but of course Microsoft won't show me where and it doesn't get caught with the error checker. Probably a #REF error or a bad chart range, so I'm going through and trying to figure out where I goofed. Otherwise, you will get assaulted every major change to the sheet by that error. And trust me, it's real annoying.

Plus-side this is making me go back through all my charts and fixing some quirks about them. Most will have dynamic data ranges and not require manual updating every year. Biggest improvement is for the Academy Personalities Pie Chart. Look at that, actually providing visual information!!

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Other major creation is I'm developing Benchmarking Graph & Tables. Ever since @mpm2342 posted their RA line-graphs to show how their squad was progressing I've wanted to implement the same in my tool. It's such a great visual to track team improvement! 

I used my 50 seasons in Barbados (FM23) to get what I consider a 'terminal' ability for the Caribbean leagues for a first guide. I'll get way better data if I can make it that long in Martinique for a multitude of reasons, but it gives a good base-case for North America. From this and current game yearly exports for MTQ T1 & T2 top teams I'll be able to create one that works for this Caribbean adventure.

Since I'm a maniac and have been playing for months in the Caribbean I don't have data relevant to any normal FM player. If anyone has a long term (30+ Season) European save they'd be willing to share I'd build you benchmarks for CA & RA for all your active top leagues. Would look like this:

Spoiler

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Ideally, I'm looking for a save with the Big 5 and some of the relevant second tier nations active. But now back to fighting excel as I slowly progress through the summer transfer window to not lose all my star players. French National 3 Teams are already hunting my players...

Edited by WhiteCat33
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5 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

Ok, so my save took a bit of a back seat this weekend as I played about with a way of being able to calculate role suitability based on attributes at scale and also highly configurable.

A while back I saw a video from YouTuber squirrel_plays who pulled together a python jupyter notebook program for calculating possible transfer targets.

I took that code and modified it so that I now have the following:

All Attribute vs All Role Weighting Matrix

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The above is a first stab at weighting which allocates 5 to the primary attributes for a role and 3 for a secondary with a tertiary value for 1 to add on any other attributes you fancy for example if you really want your wingbacks to take long throws. In truth though you can put any values here and they will work, I've just started with the attributes that the game sees as the most critical and then secondary for each role and over time I will tweak this to suit my specific needs for a save.

Export of All Attributes of Current Squad
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An all attributes filter that doesn't exclude my own players and then specifically filters for Kercem A. players gives me this list that I then export to HTML:

image.thumb.png.e798f3175a70ad14a28cd71559bfd547.png

I pop this in my Export folder (sub-directory of where the python file is) and I have a Weightings directory containing the attribute vs role weightings matrix, then I run my code against it.

The code simply multiplies the weightings for each attribute dependent on the current role being assessed for every player, adds these up and then divides by the total of the weighting before multiplying by 5 to give a "score" out of 100 for suitability.

The beauty of this is that if I just go and change some of the weightings and run again I don't have to touch the code and the output will change.

The output is an HTML file that I then select all and do a text only paste into my position ratings template excel file (didn't quite figure out how to do this in the python code just yet):

image.thumb.png.0da8bddaa54ad1674868280c3a913116.png

image.thumb.png.16e8fa0cd022ee489d98361d2284b33f.png

I then added the colour scales to each of the ratings to provide a heat map of sorts and given I have listed the roles from goalkeepers to strikers left to right and the players are ordered by position in the same order top to bottom you should see that the yellows and greens follow a top left to bottom right pattern in general.

This is most likely overkill for my save at the moment but I had fun pulling this together and I will probably spend some time going through this.

I'm curious though about how people are calculating values for potential and for hidden attributes.

Given I am only comparing players in my squad its the relative value that matters more than the actual figure itself and as I say I may loosen some of the criteria particularly for my current save (most likely just reducing the number of green and blue attributes for certain roles).

For a little case study here are the Rangers defenders and their ratings for positions along the back line:

image.thumb.png.b1a7e24114b5fce4cf0e685914c59caf.png

This was before Robin Propper signed and you can see the 3 standouts are John Souttar, Ben Davies and Leon Balogun where the greens are just that little bit darker.

Sterling is 24 and doesn't play as a centre back naturally but you can see that he would be a better option than the youth players at this time, whilst Leon King and Clinton Nsiala Makengo have similar scores to Sterling but have more chance of growing into these roles as they are only 20.

What it should highlight for the Youth Academy Challenge is how many of the youngsters are in a position to a) take a first team place b) compete for a first team place c) be back-up for a first team place or d) needs to improve before being promoted to first team

Unsure if I can share this out given it was based on the code from someone else initially but my own modifications have made it my own and I think the output is a pretty good effort. I'm looking forward to getting back to my save tomorrow and getting my season 2 intake and using it to see how they fare against the players already at the club.

 

Suddenly I feel very lazy :lol:, I don’t put this much effort into my saves. Here’s me just relying on estimated transfer values to spot the next talent

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Austria - 2053/54 - Premier League

spgwelslogo.png.d43d11a39358c666eb8fc97b38b39bdb.png

Great Season For Wels as They Win Their Sixth League Title!

League - We were brilliant but almost threw it away! With one game to play we were level on points with Rapid and then only drew our final game. Luckily, Rapid lost there's so we won our sixth title, and first for four seasons!

54leaguetable.JPG.cb4e2ac19a96b702e22dab6d63efcdd4.JPG 54champgrouptable.thumb.JPG.a14f4696a952d8359cc0420f24b94d7a.JPG

Champions League - But this is where our priorities lie! and we were great, particularly in the league stage where we managed to finish top 8 and automatically qualify for the last 16 round. There we narrowly beat Newcastle (woith a 120th minute winner!) before losing both legs of the quarter final 1-0 against Atletico. Both games could have gone either way

54CLleaguestage.thumb.JPG.bc280704a0b8691046acb231ca8f0471.JPG

 

Youth

A weird intake with one elite talent and no very good talents!

54youthpreview.thumb.JPG.4f4fd16a0f6faefb8a80b3ed232373b2.JPG

54youthintake.JPG.8786e3c595121ea04134ea9dff9b4bf4.JPG

Krebs looks like he could be good though....

54krebs.thumb.JPG.71271ef8c2d1abbd743714b032866427.JPG

 

Career

54career.thumb.JPG.6e49feb1f95fe2ea5eeb0897f6efa834.JPG

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8 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

What it should highlight for the Youth Academy Challenge is how many of the youngsters are in a position to a) take a first team place b) compete for a first team place c) be back-up for a first team place or d) needs to improve before being promoted to first team

that is pure gold @Neo_Geo really interesting to go into detailed weighted calculations in order to see if a prospect is ready

i would use it a lot!

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4 hours ago, djsterry said:

Suddenly I feel very lazy :lol:, I don’t put this much effort into my saves. Here’s me just relying on estimated transfer values to spot the next talent

I had been in the same boat for quite a while and I just didn't really want to spend loads of time every end of season with a new intake and changed stats doing a lot of manual work.

The nice thing about this is I can be quite lazy at producing it because the hard yards are done in advance. Export the player search view (as its Youth Academy Challenge I don't use it so the view and filter never change), move to the directory for my exports, run the tool and paste the results into the template and voila.

However, this really only gives insight into current ability, figuring out potential from here is the next part and to be honest I haven't a clue. Personality can determine how well a player progresses but it gives no such indication over potential so the potential star ratings and the upper estimated value are still valid methods of figuring out the next talent. Looking at this report year on year for my Y1 intake will show their progression (or lack of) and then repeat for Y2, Y3 etc. From there perhaps I will spot patterns that I can then include in this output to aid in separating the wheat from the chaff.

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Made a secondary sheet now that uses the colour scales horizontally to look the roles per player rather than a comparison against the squad and also a new column highlighting the best position which given the colour coded areas of the park (dark blue goal, light blue defence, dark green defensive mid, green midfield, orange attacking midfield, purple strikers) it becomes quite easy to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie.....albeit from an attribute perspective.

image.thumb.png.a3760e53f54ea5708a232e93736355fa.png

In the above this is my Kercem Ajax squad and interestingly you can see according to the sheet I have no best position strikers, probably due to an overlap in the attributes with more physical midfield roles as my two strikers are Pressing Forwards. It also shows no central midfielders which is actually quite accurate as I have AMCs and DMs but nothing in between in the middle of the park.

The lower the overall attributes the smaller the differences between roles and inaccuracies will obviously come into effect but what this means is that based on attributes retraining and playing players out of position doesn't have as big an effect.

I suspect at better quality teams the spread will be a lot more evident but this will be interesting to see if the intakes improve in quality with better starting attributes it might show a different picture.

I've also changed some composite "attributes" where I group a few together such as Anticipation, Concentration and Decisions as Intelligence, Pace and Acceleration as Speed, Corners and Free Kicks as Dead Ball and Stamina and Work Rate combined as just Work. These are out of 20 so they act like another attribute.

Once again I have two different views: 1 showing the strongest and weakest players for each in the squad comparison view and the other showing the players strongest and weakest areas. In addition I've added an average for each:

Squad Comparison

image.png.48f7a7f8550f255c10d04b25d8716777.png

Player Strengths and Weakness

image.png.4f28ca96ee89d06d32c70e0fbb36358b.png

From the averages I can see the physical side of the squad is stronger, with lower intelligence and poor dead ball abilities. When I look at the squad comparison view I can see Duncan Xuereb Y1-A is my best dead ball "specialist" with 7.5 out of 20 so that means I can look to use him for corners and free kicks most likely. If I look at the same player for the strengths and weaknesses I can see he is a good worker, but lacks speed and has fairly low intelligence.

I need to have a think about how I track these year on year which might just be a case of creating a new template for each player and copying the latest years calculations as the last row and it will show a nice progression in each cell and also any changes with the best position. If I couple this with retraining I should see how effective retraining is (and can cross check that with personality to see the impact that has).

I really wanted to take the time to get something solid as a foundation for moving forward as my updates felt very bland and I think this will really provide some insight into the squad and some of the key players (I'll obviously include as spoilers so that those that don't want to see this stuff can easily avoid it :lol:)

It's hard to stop adding things to this but I think I need to get back to my save now!

 

 

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@Koetzer great choice of a save, what an interesting club name. I'm loving these out of the ordinary league choices, makes a nice change from the vanilla ones.

Funnily enough one of the players I had in my Croatia save was indeed a Dutch/Surinamese player, I wish you luck as it will be intriguing to see your story unfold.

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image.png.a9fe72911d955d06191a857663e116e3.png

2038

Table | Squad | Transfers

Started the season quite well and was midtable for a good portion of the season. In the 2nd half of the season the team had the usual decline in performances and sunk down to just above the relegation spots, drawing a lot of games. A win in the 2nd to last game set up a final game with Karlskrona, an 88 min goal from Keymer leveled the scores at 3-3 to avoid the relegation playoff.

Not entered in the swedish cup.

The group stage for last seasons swedish cup is played just before the start of this season and is included in this seasons finances which  doubled as a result of lucrative away games and gate takings. The board still refusing all improvements including a reserve team which is holding back the team along with a lack of competitive u19 games.

Johansson started the season on fire but dropped off and was replaced by Keymer for the last few games. Edin showed how far above the rest of the squad he is and keeping hold of him could be a problem with only 1 year deals allowed. Babatunde (155 app, 11 goals) never really improved but provided a useful squad option has now left.

Youth preview was a drop in quality with the new HOYD although the intake appeared no different. Majkic is maybe the best. It did feature the first non swedish youth player.

The 2028 intake was 10 years ago and 2 players have established themselves, Noren has made 205 apps with 36 goals at RW. Mustafa took a while to become first choice LB but has now made 104 apps with 2 goals. Pontus Karlsson made 43 apps before leaving with only a few app since, Christian Karlsson left without an app but has made 150 apps since leaving. The other players made only a handful of apps before leaving and then retiring.

Spoiler

Youth nationalities:

Continent

Europe

Africa

South America

Asia

North America

Oceania

Overall

224

100%

Country

#

%

Country

#

%

Country

#

%

Country

#

%

Country

#

%

Country

#

%

Europe

211.16

94.27%

Sweden

198.83

88.76%

Eritrea

1.5

0.67%

Uruguay

1

0.45%

Iraq

1

0.45%

Jamaica

0.83

0.37%

     

Africa

6.5

2.90%

Bosnia

2.5

1.12%

Gambia

1

0.45%

Chile

1

0.45%

Indonesia

1

0.45%

USA

0.5

0.22%

     

Asia

3

1.34%

Greece

2

0.89%

Somalia

0.5

0.22%

     

Palestine

0.5

0.22%

           

South America

2

0.89%

Turkey

1.5

0.67%

Niger

0.5

0.22%

     

Japan

0.5

0.22%

           

North America

1.33

0.59%

Albania

1.5

0.67%

Nigeria

0.5

0.22%

                       

Oceania

0

0

Serbia

1.5

0.67%

Egypt

0.5

0.22%

                       
     

Italy

1

0.45%

DRC

0.5

0.22%

                       
     

Kosovo

1

0.45%

Ghana

0.5

0.22%

                       
     

England

0.83

0.37%

Ethiopia

0.5

0.22%

                       
     

Finland

0.5

0.22%

Zambia

0.5

0.22%

                       

 

Spoiler

Season

League

Position

Swedish Cup

Europe

Top Scorer

Top Assists

Attendance

Training

Youth

Junior

Youth Rec

Notes

2025

D2 WG

5th

Not entered

N/A

Arvidsson,Messaoudi (8)

Jensen(6)

261

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2026

D2 WG

5th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (11)

Warmlov(6)

251

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2027

D2 WG

6th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (10)

Lai(9)

261

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2028

D2 WG

10th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (15)

Messaoudi (7)

241

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2029

D2 WG

7th

Not entered

N/A

Strom - 27j (11)

Athanasiou -26p (7)

250

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2030

D2 WG

9th

Not entered

N/A

Lai(12)

Noren -28k (5)

267

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2031

D2 WG

8th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (14)

Lai(5)

277

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2032

D2 WG

8th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (15)

Babatunde- 29h (6)

275

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2033

D2 WG

5th

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (19)

Sjoqvist(8)

289

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2034

D2 WG

6th

Not entered

N/A

Strom - 27j (12)

Sjoqvist(7)

287

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

2035

D2 WG

1st

Not entered

N/A

Keymer-25c (16)

Noren -28k (10)

321

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

Promoted

2036

D1S

14th

Not entered

N/A

Johansson-29j (14)

Athanasiou -26p (5)

338

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

Relegated

2037

D2 WG

2nd

Group St

N/A

Johansson-29j (19)

Noren -28k (11)

308

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

Promoted

2038

D1S

12th

Not entered

N/A

Johansson-29j (13)

Edin -37a (11)

295

Basic

Basic

Fairly Basic

Limited

 

 

Youth Name

All time apps

 

Youth Name

All time Goals

 

Youth Name

All time Assists

Roger Gustafsson (25e)

321

 

Ted Keymer (25c)

132

 

Manolis Athanasiou (26p)

50

Mathias Sandin (25d)

300

 

Sebastian Johansson (29j)

53

 

Marcus Noren (28k)

48

Manolis Athanasiou (26p)

288

 

Manolis Athanasiou (26p)

41

 

Martin Tahiri (30i)

32

Ted Keymer (25c)

270

 

Marcus Noren (28k)

36

 

Ted Keymer (25c)

22

Marcus Noren (28k)

205

 

Milton Strom (27j)

34

 

Hugo Berisha (29g)

17

 

Edited by Thebaker
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3 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

Made a secondary sheet now that uses the colour scales horizontally to look the roles per player rather than a comparison against the squad and also a new column highlighting the best position which given the colour coded areas of the park (dark blue goal, light blue defence, dark green defensive mid, green midfield, orange attacking midfield, purple strikers) it becomes quite easy to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie.....albeit from an attribute perspective.

image.thumb.png.a3760e53f54ea5708a232e93736355fa.png

In the above this is my Kercem Ajax squad and interestingly you can see according to the sheet I have no best position strikers, probably due to an overlap in the attributes with more physical midfield roles as my two strikers are Pressing Forwards. It also shows no central midfielders which is actually quite accurate as I have AMCs and DMs but nothing in between in the middle of the park.

The lower the overall attributes the smaller the differences between roles and inaccuracies will obviously come into effect but what this means is that based on attributes retraining and playing players out of position doesn't have as big an effect.

I suspect at better quality teams the spread will be a lot more evident but this will be interesting to see if the intakes improve in quality with better starting attributes it might show a different picture.

I've also changed some composite "attributes" where I group a few together such as Anticipation, Concentration and Decisions as Intelligence, Pace and Acceleration as Speed, Corners and Free Kicks as Dead Ball and Stamina and Work Rate combined as just Work. These are out of 20 so they act like another attribute.

Once again I have two different views: 1 showing the strongest and weakest players for each in the squad comparison view and the other showing the players strongest and weakest areas. In addition I've added an average for each:

Squad Comparison

image.png.48f7a7f8550f255c10d04b25d8716777.png

Player Strengths and Weakness

image.png.4f28ca96ee89d06d32c70e0fbb36358b.png

From the averages I can see the physical side of the squad is stronger, with lower intelligence and poor dead ball abilities. When I look at the squad comparison view I can see Duncan Xuereb Y1-A is my best dead ball "specialist" with 7.5 out of 20 so that means I can look to use him for corners and free kicks most likely. If I look at the same player for the strengths and weaknesses I can see he is a good worker, but lacks speed and has fairly low intelligence.

I need to have a think about how I track these year on year which might just be a case of creating a new template for each player and copying the latest years calculations as the last row and it will show a nice progression in each cell and also any changes with the best position. If I couple this with retraining I should see how effective retraining is (and can cross check that with personality to see the impact that has).

I really wanted to take the time to get something solid as a foundation for moving forward as my updates felt very bland and I think this will really provide some insight into the squad and some of the key players (I'll obviously include as spoilers so that those that don't want to see this stuff can easily avoid it :lol:)

It's hard to stop adding things to this but I think I need to get back to my save now!

 

 

Love the spreadsheets, I have one setup for role abilities and one that shows attribute increases per season. Yours looks really good for working out what tactic to use. @Neo_Geo

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5 minutes ago, hyrule_king said:

Has anyone got a game setup file for the England youth challenge?, every time I load up a game , there is hardly any players. 

From opening post. If that's not helping try to load all players from England.

 

Optional

 

Any additional settings in the ‘Advanced Database Setup’ – Due to us not being allowed to buy players, adding extra players just adds to the realism of your game and potentially slightly increases difficulty. NOTE – It is highly recommended you add the highest unplayable leagues for your country, as this will help make sure the promoted teams (you will be taking control of) have players.

As an example, this is what I loaded for England for example - 1.jpg.ffeb96bd71412b3db3c1adbf9e9e977a.jpg

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4 hours ago, patrikholm said:

From opening post. If that's not helping try to load all players from England.

 

Optional

 

Any additional settings in the ‘Advanced Database Setup’ – Due to us not being allowed to buy players, adding extra players just adds to the realism of your game and potentially slightly increases difficulty. NOTE – It is highly recommended you add the highest unplayable leagues for your country, as this will help make sure the promoted teams (you will be taking control of) have players.

As an example, this is what I loaded for England for example - 1.jpg.ffeb96bd71412b3db3c1adbf9e9e977a.jpg

Yeah I saw that on the OP but the english southern premier doesn't show up for me. Found this with the new league names on 

d2nrmbbx2xs71.jpg

 

 

 

Edited by hyrule_king
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9 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

However, this really only gives insight into current ability, figuring out potential from here is the next part and to be honest I haven't a clue. Personality can determine how well a player progresses but it gives no such indication over potential so the potential star ratings and the upper estimated value are still valid methods of figuring out the next talent. Looking at this report year on year for my Y1 intake will show their progression (or lack of) and then repeat for Y2, Y3 etc. From there perhaps I will spot patterns that I can then include in this output to aid in separating the wheat from the chaff.

It is hard enough to tell what the potential is, let alone actually realizing it. So many factors that I like to let the data trends tell me who to care about. I have a sheet in my workbook that looks at progression by position and role that gives me a view on how the players progress. Here is an example of the CM in the BWM (S) role. It shows me the last 5 years based on the year I put in a different cell in the sheet. From this example you can see how Daniel Quinn is progressing quite nicely picking up 8 rating points in the 5 years. I had very high hopes for Zoran with the big jump, but then he didn't follow it up.  Almost all the youth players show 5 star potential because the team isn't very good, the training facilites are at 2, so suck pretty bad and I have fairly good coaches.
Screenshot2024-08-26153920.png.0af3faded8fe7b7eb108abb32057d0e6.png

This view lets me see the youngsters coming in that are competent in the position  - most of them are not cut out for the BWM role, so Quinn and Brady are the guys with hope still there for Zoran.  I have the squad view that shows me role score without worrying about role competency so I can see if there is anyone worth retraining and for BWM, it looks like Brown is a good candidate for retraining, especially since he is not highly ranked in other positions / roles. The competency is a toggle in that spreadsheet and I use it to plan the first team etc.

Screenshot2024-08-26154624.png.f3f7e9db2fb76bcb2fb05f92a398b15f.png

I get a lot of enjoyment playing around with the spreadsheets and data - have way too much time on my hands :)

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8 hours ago, Neo_Geo said:

It's hard to stop adding things to this but I think I need to get back to my save now!

Welcome to the data and stats rabbit hole, may you have better luck climbing out of it than I

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KercemAjaxBanner.thumb.png.a515c34e47019107b3a3d6625d673e0f.png

THE GREENS ARE INVINCIBLE AS TOP TIER PROMOTION IS IN THE BAG

S2-TitleWin.png.123490071f020fc6042291c528de90ed.png

I lost the last of my 3 original strikers in the summer window and one of the defenders who was promised more game time (and was happy with the progress) then left when an offer came in which wasn't the best backdrop to playing a division up.

However, as you can see from the title not only did we get promotion we did it in style with an invincible league campaign and reaching the cup semi-final losing to Hamrun Spartans 3-2 (A) and we had beaten Floriana in the 4th Round on penalties.

With my other striker leaving I was left with a decision, play a silver rated current ability striker as one of my front two or change the formation. I went with the latter to accommodate one of my promising AMCs from last years intake (though I later discovered via my spreadsheet that I had an original cast member who was excellent there). I moved to a 4-1-1-4 DM Wide Asymmetric AM(CR) formation and whether it was the asymmetry or just getting good balance throughout it worked a treat.

S2-LeaguePosition.png.3bc3f4f4d4ca15c1b59fbf88e6a8cb7d.png

97 goals for and 24 against just sums up how good we were this season, a truly amazing season that sees us gain back to back promotions and now in the top tier in the shortest timeframe possible. I do love playing in these smaller countries with a strong squad! I cannot stress enough how important it is to find a team with a strong squad for the start of this challenge and although you can't see attributes if you can see a potential formation from that initial squad and it has depth then its usually a sound idea to go for that team.


S2-PrizeMoney.png.f09a6076c2453cdc80bf04291bcbe45a.pngThanks to the money from the cup run I was able to get 2 coaching courses approved (the second was started a few weeks before season end) and then the promotion gave us £120k meaning I was then able to request junior coaching and youth recruitment improvements with a chance they'd get accepted.

The Junior Coaching was accepted without any discussion but I had to persuade them for the Youth Recruitment. Both of these are now at 6 which is better than a number of clubs in the Premier League but a number have significantly better Youth Recruitment so the sooner I can improve this the sooner I start to get the best Maltese talent on offer.S2-ClubsComps.png.113359336d4367d1d734fbd69ada02c5.png

 

I've changed the club and competitions page to the right to now show the Maltese Premier Ranking and also the Malta FIFA ranking as this is technically a build a nation save therefore these are important aspects.

If I start to get players in the national set-up I will start to follow the Maltese results in more detail as the nation hopefully gets stronger.

 

 

 

 

 

Youth Intake

Getting some decent elites coming through despite having 3 youth recruitment and 3 junior coaching for the first 2 seasons. I don't see any of the players getting into the squad straight away and are more likely to be an upgrade to the back-up that I have. Out of the elites there were 3 with positive personalities (Professional, Fairly Professional and Fairly Determined) which is really good to have at this stage and I will be keeping a keen eye on these 3 players progress over the coming seasons using my new spreadsheet.

S2-YouthIntake-Preview.thumb.png.c23c0501686348ff4d77ec31e7f3ee82.png S2-YouthIntake-Overview.thumb.png.a8ba7243d133c8368850f4f9817f22f5.png

Elite Talents

Spoiler

S2-1-Farrugia.png.321864202da1ca2337c11c66e55d40ed.png S2-2-Borg.png.80f1484a8cb7278cff922165191a8b90.png S2-3-Buttigieg.png.6f5cbb688ea427c030bc7672eedbee98.png

S2-4-Buhagiar.png.13f832418a2fdd0b6af913d3a3499573.png S2-5-Carabott.png.30548c14dd63d59ffe74fedd71ca8bf0.png S2-6-Sammut.png.c47f655692241b9abe6faf4c8611b282.png

Here is a zoomed out view of the Y2 intake with regards to their best positions (colour scales are for the role strength per player and not comparing players for a particular role)

S2-IntakeRoleOverview.png.b76f07d3553970894c17dac0d3949098.png

This shows that one again speed and work rate are the strongest combined attributes for the intake, poor intelligence and awful dead ball. The heat map shows that the intake looks strongest in midfield and attacking midfield in general but with a number of strong greens in the DM positions, weakest in central defence and attack. The best positions back this up with 6 of the 16 having DM_BWM as their best role based on attributes, 5 are AMC_AM, 4 as WM_W and 1 GK_G. What this tells me is that my strikers and central defenders do not stand out in these positions and will need a lot of training in the key attributes to get them up to speed (or just retrain in alternate positions and roles).

Squad News

As with last year here are some Out Of the Box (Game) images:

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It paints a similar story to last season with no real changes apart from having a central midfielder come through and my upfront Michael Attard Y1-A is excelling.

In terms of the Best Eleven it was an excellent year with our standout being Wayne Borg with 26 goal contributions in 32 games and an average rating of 7.70, the bad news is he is 32 so will not be around for much longer. Only 3 of the first team did not manage to break through the 7.00 average rating mark.

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Now onto the overall squad view using the new spreadsheet which again I am opting to use on the colour scales depicting the strongest role per player rather than the strongest player per role.

S2-FullSquadRoles.png.166896efb3a8716152c871e0da15036a.png

This isn't meant to be legible for this post but the spread of the colours gives a clear indication where my team is strong and where it is weak (not that I can do a great deal about this as the intake is completely outside of my control!)

I then added another sheet which only has the roles applicable to my tactics being displayed:

S2-MySquadByTacticRoles.thumb.png.e95d015a86561a06df84a0120b7ff833.png

Here I can now see that for specific roles in the team (for the way I want to play) where I have weaknesses so for instance you can see I don't have any competent ball playing defenders (as they are better suited to central defenders or no nonsense centre-back. The other problem area is pressing forwards with only Michael Attard Y1-A being good enough for this. What will be interesting to see will be checking in on this year on year and in particular filtering out for that Years intake to see how well they fit into my current tactic.

Bingo Card

A bumper season this year as far as the bingo card was concerned thanks to the invincible league performance with 6 targets being daubed:

S2-BingoCard.png.70af85300e134429581bfd054d6f0fe5.png

 

Neo Geo's Final Thoughts

I am having a blast with this save at the moment and looking forward to testing myself against the top flight, based on the cup games I think we have a good chance of staying up if I can keep the squad together. Staying in the division is really important financially with £167k awarded if you can finish out side of the relegation play-off spots (5th to 11th is £167k) and if this is achieved for a season or two I should be able to get the youth recruitment and junior coaching up towards the high teens. The facilities can't be upgraded unless I can get some European football but for now I am just delighted to be in the top tier in season 3 and financially stable following a rough 2 seasons.

 

 

Edited by Neo_Geo
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1 hour ago, Neo_Geo said:

Neo Geo's Final Thoughts

I am having a blast with this save at the moment

Happy to hear that and love the charts and ratings you are doing.  One of the bonuses I find from doing the analysis etc. is that I start to grow attached to the players and their growth journeys which immerses me more into the saves. 

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12 hours ago, Lyiam_13 said:

Has anyone in their save dropped from professional status to semi-professional status?

Unfortunately I did. Dulwich Hamlet. Got promoted to the National League, then relegated back down and the board went semi-pro. We've been back up in the National League for 5 years in a row now, and even won the FA trophy last season, but the board still refuses to go professional again. It's awful, all my best youth intake players get poached right away or certainly after 1 year.

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When I said my save was going to be a true build a nation as I was only allowed 1 foreign player in the match squad and 2 to be registered.......turns out that's for the lower leagues.

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I guess I wasn't looking that far ahead but this now means I can of course have foreign players come through the intake and use them if good enough (so far I've had one player from North Macedonia the rest are Maltese).

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14 hours ago, Lyiam_13 said:

Has anyone in their save dropped from professional status to semi-professional status?

Yes - I have been promoted twice from bottom league in Spain to the one below and each time I have gone back down I have reverted to semi-pro status. Although team now going along nicely and after winning bottom league quite comfortably I am well inside the play-off position to try and get into the 2nd tier.

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image.png.6d2c0af4b01f80b458019012fb3e6278.png

Etincelle Macouba – Martinique Youth Academy Challenge

2028 Season 4 – Martinique Trophee Claude Chade R2

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Past Updates:

Spoiler

I'll add in an edit. I'm away from my desktop computer so that is why the screenshots switch from LightSkin + Faces to DarkSkin w/o faces. Doing minimal graphics to keep the game speed up.

League Performance: CHAMPIONS!!

We're Going up! We played well the whole season, but two early 1 goal defeats meant it wasn't until Week 15 we pushed to the top of the table. Our form continued resulting in an undisputed title.

Domestic Cup Performance:

Coupe de Martinique: Final Game Loss

Coupled to a fantastic season we went on a serious cup run reaching our first cup final of the save. There we faced off for the second time against Golden Lions (the reigning champion of Martinique). While the first half was a muted 1 goal for them, the second half was filled with excitement. Sadly, we couldn't answer their final goal and fell 3-2 (again).

Squad:

CA & RA Excel Player List:

Spoiler

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There is My GK, then my CD and then the rest of the team. At least we have defensive strength to hopefully survive the increased talent in the division above? A notable negative development is my 2nd star CM also fell down to "Low Self Belief". You can see that means he has no Pressure. It says the Professionalism is decent, but that's just because its an almost max-range situation.

CA & RA Team Tables:

Spoiler

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While of course the club needs better everything but GK, wingers in particular are a major problem.

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CMs show a lot better Role Rating than CA Rating, which links to how strong of a performance they produced again this season.

Team Top 10 Career & Top 5 Season Tables

Spoiler

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Another 2 seasons till a YA player breaks 100 Apps (Sacha Bousqet - 62). Goals would be Bilal Catteau from CM if he can keep belting in FK and runs forward into the box. CA we are getting great development in our CD and GK, but the rest of the squad is stagnant. [To be expected with Poor facilities & part-time]. What is interesting to me is how Role Ability brings up a number of these lower CA players to functionally the same level as my GK. With our entire back 5 (GK+D) as our top 6 best RA players, we've got a solid defensive core going for the club.

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Our Striker has improved this year both in his goal return as well as his ability in training. Nervous about how well he will do up a flight as he really isn't that stellar.

Player Highlights:

GK Morgan Berger: It took the 15-year-old a few games to gain his footing, but then he was a beast in net. 16 shut outs and only 17 goals allowed in 22 League + 6 Cup games. He turns 17 at the start of the Winter Transfer Window so I expect him to leave us for greener pastures on a free.

CD Nicholas Boudin: A pleasant surprise developing CD who has become the anchor to the defense. Fairly Ambitious is worrisome as we try to hold onto him, but so far he's remained loyal.

LM Sacha Bousqet: Received the wonderful +4 Det event and has been playing well for us on the left flank. He's fast, and at this level that is enough to be dangerous.

Excel Team Analysis:

Spoiler

image.png.f967c50d05608442e287e95a7dc9f263.png

Team is holding with the drop in player-counts. I just included the main squad here instead of all players at the club. Probably should do all players for longitudinal tracking, but might look to change these graphs / exports to players who made an appearance.

image.png.9ec7011c99536e145ae359e5e9fda859.png

Bump up in top 5 quality. Same comment above for player personalities. Big negative is the second Low Self Belief as they will both be influential players due to skill.

image.png.43834a6f794d547cbb7417430fda0277.png

Nice outlier eh?

image.png.c60a032f3eeb0576edd94bee336f5a01.png

Y0 Roles was messed up, but not worth fixing. Love to see the flip of GK being horrific to being fantastic and the steady increase in quality of actually used players.

Transfer Activity:

I've played through the pre-season before this update as this is the critical transfer window. Promotion to the topflight unlocks part-time contracts. However, our whole team starts new non-contracts at the start of the transfer window. We did well, only losing our backup striker, who wasn't that great anyways.

Spoiler

 

Head Coach:

Acquired a coaching course and now Mr. Manager is decent for this level.

Club Improvements:

I waited until the title was secured before enacting upgrades to JR Coaching & Youth Recruitment. Both are now up to "Good". I've been right to wait as we maintained a fairly neutral balance this year with maintained facilities. The board thinks we have the best Youth System in the country...mhm sure.

Youth Academy:

Head of Youth Development

No change, I'll be riding him out for probably 5-10 seasons until we can start recruiting actual quality HOYDs.

Youth Intake Preview:

Spoiler

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Youth Intake:

Downside of MTQ is that all players are dual nationals, so it's hard to accurately track the 3rd nationalities that come through. You’ll see we have a Guadeloupe born player who registers as MTQ and France 1st and 2nd nationalities. 

Spoiler

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YI Best Candidates:

Two standout favorites are another GK who is professional and the Driven LB who I plan to move up to ML where we have significantly less depth.

Spoiler

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YA Excel Analysis:

Spoiler

image.png.0e624768e7b277de1c3061056624094d.png

Maybe there is a good Professional trend showing in Graph 1?! 

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Deeper "quality" intake this year and we are maintaining 1 40+ player a year from last year. The big improvement this year was our numerous "Low Det" players instead of "Unambitious". At least I think that's an improvement?

image.png.d99bd35748fe3d3030c968f10dd83e0a.png

"Unambitious" is the 2nd Orange bar in the stack. IMO players who were Unambitious in the past came through Low Determination this intake. [Stack is under 100% because it is only top 20 personalities generated by the club, so we got something additional this year]

image.png.a0e26ed1d96b19a0bbea74c19f2e3146.png

Personalities are in good shape IMO. 

Academy Tables:

With major edits to the spreadsheet requiring re-exporting data the HOYD tracking & Club infrastructure part don't have proper historical data. Maybe I'll go back and fix this, or just start from here.

Spoiler

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Youth Nationality:

Spoiler

My automated version of @XaW's nationality table

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Working on some new graphs for Birth nation and Nationality. Pie-Graph is super boring for Martinique. Bar-Charts are showing that while we've yet to scout outside of our town Basse-Pointe there are some French-Born and one lone Guadeloupe born player sneaking into the intakes.

image.png.f80ad159c0b6b9a0719bb7a71384ca54.png

Spreadsheet Manager:

I think I finally squashed the bug after rebuilding all of my Team & Youth Graphs. Some more cleaning and I'll upload versions to MediaFire before I add new features. 

 

Summary

It all clicked this season; I credit the young star GK for it completely. He was the only additional piece added to the starting XI and gave our defense the anchor it desperately required. Next season will be difficult as the step up in difficulty is substantial. While stronger field players would be nice to start next season, acquiring a second great GK in my intake is honestly the best situation. I will be shocked if I hold onto my current GK, so 6 months in the youth squad to gain consistency before starting for the main squad should set us up for (hopefully) a career GK.

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Youth Academy Challenge Bingo & Trophy Cabinet

The Cup Final appearance was a surprise Bingo check-off. With only 28 games a season the YA Appearance boxes will come slowly. Next year it's all about that "Avoid Relegation" achievement, and there is always a chance my GK could get the "Youth of the Season".

Spoiler

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image.png.244aac88e55e43780db5c0c89a0ff295.png

 

 

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Latest addition to my spreadsheet is to include an export and a tab for training.

This looks at the attributes for each training focus value and simply averages these to give an overall rating out of 20. This means you can easily see the areas that are lacking for a player that training can directly influence, its then up to you whether the area that is lacking is relevant for the role they play in:

image.thumb.png.04fc845405840784edac6f97befe9a5e.png

For my other sheets and colour scales it was all about relativity between the players and their roles i.e. what role is Player A best at, who is best at Pressing Forward Player A or Player B? The top of that scale is the highest player rating for a role or the highest rated role for a player and that should show up as Dark Green.

For the table above this is showing the scale of 1-20 so only when a player has strong associated attributes to training focus will it show as green rather than showing the highest value as green overall.

This gives me a very good view for the squad as a whole and I can clearly see that for the likes of long throws we have one average player and the rest are lower quartile.

I think this is the best formatting for training as it shows me clearly where the team is lacking and where I can directly influence this with focused training. Similarly if I just want to look at one particular player I can then make a decision from here rather than trying to remember which stats are related to which training focus' (I remember a number off by heart but not all)

The only thing its missing is where I can see for the role I want to use them in the training focus areas that matter, I may well work on that a bit.

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